Other countries have taken steps to control the development of Control in the film by the creation of Film Institutes in close relation to the Government .sx Other Countries .sx ( Paras .sx 29/35 .sx ) Some of these Film Institutes wield powers which we should hesitate to confer on a British Institute or Corporation .sx We do not want to see the cinema under tutelage .sx We feel that Government control , such as exists in Russia , or close supervision either of an entertainment or an art , is unnatural , unhealthy , and not in the national tradition .sx The industry , in our view , can and should develop in the hands of those who understand its management .sx The educational bodies of this country can co-operate effectively with the industry ; if they attempt to nurse it they will defeat their own ends .sx We hope to see the machinery of co-operation set up in the form of a National Film Institute , but we are well aware that an organisation without the right kind of public support will not do what we want .sx We submit that the constructive use of the cinema is a form of national planning from which the finest intelligences of the country should no longer hold aloof .sx Their influence may be indirect ; but their critical interest , if the criticism be informed and constructive , can only help the industry whose readiness to welcome co-operation has been emphasised to us by their representatives on the Commission .sx In a film-producing country the film has more than a domestic The Reputation interest .sx It is not merely " business " :sx it is a national concern .sx of a Film-For the prestige of a nation is already affected by the films which it Producing exports , and will increasingly be judged thereby .sx The U.S.A. , however Country .sx unjustly , have suffered much in this country from the popular estimate of their worst films .sx The films which a country produces are seen by more people than will ever see its plays or read its books ; and the cinema public is not uncritical either of form or content .sx Other important film-producing countries have made films which have a national personality , which contribute something essentially belonging to their country of origin , and which ( besides being good films ) can be identified as typically German , Russian , French .sx We may perhaps instance from Germany , " Vaudeville " and " Kameradschaft " ; from Russia , " The General Line " and " Storm over Asia " ; from France , " Therese Raquin " and " Sous les Toits de Paris " ; and , one may add , from America , films such as " The Covered Waggon .sx " A nation which produces a live and characteristic art , particularly if that art be popular and a good entertainment , is judged itself to be vigorous .sx If we are bound to recognise that Great Britain ( except in the limited field of nature study micro-photography ) has so far produced few films of this calibre , equally we welcome the signs of vigorous new .sx growth in the British film industry which offers high promise for the future .sx The interests which the Commission represents can do more than they yet realise to help this national movement to take form .sx The Need for 19 .sx Cinematography has had to endure much criticism which is .sx Constructive neither informed nor constructive , even though too often it may be .sx Criticism .sx deserved .sx Like the printed book the film can display a wide variety of content , and the photography ( like the writing ) may be good or bad , imaginative or sentimental .sx Handled with skill and insight , the film can depict tragedy and comedy in a manner worthy of the masters :sx ill-used , it degenerates immediately into vulgarity and tedium .sx The vulgarity and tedium of a really bad film is abominable , and no doubt harmful , but the evil effect of the cinema has , in our view , been overstressed .sx In so far as films have done harm , uncritical condemnation by those set in authority over the young has had a share of the responsibility .sx For it is all too easy to draw up a generalised and uncritical indictment of the cinema .sx An appraisement of what is good and what is bad is more difficult , because it implies knowledge .sx Educational opinion ( with honourable exceptions ) has been more ready to condemn than to investigate ; and if resolutions could kill , the cinema industry would long ago have perished .sx If an adolescent go to the cinema as to a resort condemned by his headmaster , he goes with a feeling that he is vindicating his manhood and eating the for-bidden fruit .sx If there be moral harm to be got from the cinema , then he is in a mood to get it .sx We would suggest that it is a duty incumbent on those who are concerned with the effect of the cinema upon its audiences to go to the pictures themselves ; to learn to understand the medium which they are criticising , to distinguish between good and bad film productions of different companies ; in short , to equip themselves with knowledge to criticise constructively and to influence the cinema taste of those with whom they are in contact .sx Growth of 20 .sx Very properly , any attempt on the part of authority to influence .sx Public Opinion .sx taste is suspect .sx We therefore make it clear that we do not want the " feature " film of the cinema programme to be made deliberately " improving .sx " Public opinion , i.e. the average , partly educated audience , is becoming articulate and acquiring technical knowledge .sx It will no longer accept placidly what the less imaginative financial interests think it ought to like , and what , indeed , it has for long been content to pay for .sx Film articles in the penny papers are trenchant and sometimes highly competent criticism .sx Within the protection of the Quota Act it should now be possible to produce entertainment films which will give people some-thing a little better than they are accustomed to , and will lead public opinion without running dangerously far ahead ; and ( a complementary development ) interest films of more than entertainment value , which , being photographed and directed with first-class professional skill , will by .sx their form , as well as by their content , add dignity to the cinema films which in fact are educational .sx The phrases " cultural , " " educational , " " entertainment , " and Definitions ) " interest " films will appear often in this Report .sx It may be well to give here some definitions which we repeat in a later chapter .sx The word " educational " may be used in a restricted sense for the teaching film , the film in school or in the laboratory serving as an aid to the teacher , to the investigator and to the student ; or in a much wider sense for the generally educative or interest film to be shown to larger audiences of children , adolescents or adults .sx There are subdivisions ( for instance , the film for scientific research and the film for historical record ) , and the two kinds of films shade into each other ; but the general distinction remains .sx There is also the cultural film .sx For if the film is not only an instrument of visual instruction , it is also a means of entertainment , and a vital form of modern post-war art .sx But it is in the public cinema that the film has its strongest hold on national interest , and therefore its greatest cultural and social influence , notably on children and adolescents .sx If , therefore , the standard of public taste is to be raised , we must begin with the children ; and there the public cinema links up again with the school :sx our problem is really one .sx How can we use a modern medium to develop the intelligence of a generation which has become cinema-minded through familiarity over a number of years with a form of instructive entertainment unknown to earlier generations ?sx If , then , we speak of educational films in the public cinema , we do not want to spoil good entertainment , but , by adding a new ingredient , to give richness to the mixture ; and if we regard it as a duty of the schools to train children's taste in films , we do not disparage the film as an aid to instruction .sx The schools teach reading , grammar and composition not as ends in themselves , but that a child may grow up equipped to discern the true from the tawdry and to appreciate the literature of his own and other countries :sx culture will not make him a prig , or prevent him from enjoying a good detective story .sx Within this general framework of ideas we discuss the film in Analysis of the national life as a power for good which we can use , not as a power for Report .sx evil which we may abuse .sx We make one central recommendation that a National Film Institute be set up in Great Britain , financed in part by public funds and incorporated under Royal Charter .sx This Report is concerned principally to set out the facts and the reasoning on which we base this recommendation .sx Our secondary purpose is to summarise the results of earlier research and to give the public information about cinematography which is not readily accessible .sx In this chapter we have described the position as it is :sx sporadic and unco-ordinated effort and enquiry with no central controlling body .sx In Chapter H. we describe what other countries are doing :sx England alone is without any form of permanent central organisation .sx In Chapter III .sx we describe the machinery of censorship , and illustrate the difference between censorship , a negative force , and constructive planning .sx In Chapter IV .sx we give sonic description of the complex craft and industry of the cinema , and emphasise the need for co-operation with the trade .sx The next four chapters show the various uses of the film :sx in the education of the child ( Chapter V. ) ; in the entertainment of public audiences ( Chapter VI .sx ) ; in the education of the adult ( Chapter VII .sx ) ; and in documentary record and scientific enquiry ( Chapter ) .sx Chapter IX .sx describes how the film may be used to link up the self-governing Dominions of the Empire , and in the service of backward races .sx The final chapter summarises the Report and describes the constitution and functions which , we suggest , are appropriate to a National Film Institute in Great Britain .sx We have repeated certain paragraphs and arguments in our Report with a deliberate and a double purpose .sx We want each chapter , dealing as it does with a particular aspect of the enquiry , and therefore interesting perhaps one particular group of readers , to be self-contained .sx And we want to emphasise at each stage of the Report the point of view from which our approach is made .sx We are concerned , and the Film Institute would be concerned , with a constructive and not with a restrictive influence on cinematography .sx Criticism and 23 .sx The Commission will welcome any comment , criticism or sug- .sx Suggestions .sx gestions which readers of this Report may care to address to its secretaries .sx CHAPTER II .sx THE FILM IN OTHER COUNTRIES .sx 24 .sx A film has a national conception and an international life .sx If it is The Film as an more than a piece of hack-work , it will express the national tradition and International outlook of the country which made it , no less surely than that country's Problem .sx painting and books .sx But increasingly and irresistibly the film public is international to a degree unimagined in literature , and difficult to realise with works of art which are bulky , fragile or precious .sx We have to think internationally , therefore , in the sense that we want to see the best work from other countries freely admitted to our own , and nationally in that we want British peoples to see life in terms of British culture .sx No nation which produces films and no nation which imports the films produced by others can afford to ignore the cinema , and any society of nations such as the British Empire or the League of Nations must look on the cinema both as an international force and as an international problem .sx The film has a world-wide popularity and is firmly established .sx Its future development can be influenced , it cannot be confined .sx There are , it is said , in the world to-day 61,551 cinemas , about half of which are wired for sound reproduction .sx That half includes all the large houses in important centres the other half is a now negligible remnant of smaller local theatres .sx Soon the picture houses of the world will be equipped to reproduce speech as well as action .sx